The Project Gutenberg EBook of A German Pompadour, by Marie Hay

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Title: A German Pompadour
Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz,
Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg

Author: Marie Hay

Release Date: June 11, 2008 [EBook #25758]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A GERMAN POMPADOUR

[Illustration: WILHELMINE REICHSGRAeFIN VON GRAeVENITZ.

_From a Portrait in the collection of Frau Anna Remshardt
at Heilbronn._]

A GERMAN POMPADOUR

Being the Extraordinary History of

WILHELMINE VON GRAeVENITZ

LANDHOFMEISTERIN OF WIRTEMBERG

A NARRATIVE OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BY

MARIE HAY

AUTHOR OF 'DIANNE DE POYTIERS' AND
'AN UNREQUITED LOYALTY'

[Illustration]

SECOND IMPRESSION
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1906

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

THIS
BOOK OF MEMORIES
IS DEDICATED

TO

A MEMORY

PREFACE

'The Past that is not overpast,
But present here.'

IN a dusty, time-soiled packet of legal papers which had lain untouched
for nigh upon two hundred years, the extraordinary history of Wilhelmine
von Graevenitz is set forth in all the colourless reticence of official
documents. And yet something of the thrill of the superstitious fear, and
the virtuous disapproval of the lawyers who composed these writings,
pierces through the stilted phrases. Like a faint fragrance of faded
rose-leaves, a breath of this woman's charm seems to cling and elusively
to peep out of the curt record of her crimes. Enough at least to incite
the wanderer in History's byways to a further study of this potent German
forerunner of the Pompadour.

To search through the Stuttgart archives, to ferret out forgotten books
in dusty old book-shops, to fit together the links in the chain of events
of the woman's story, to haunt the scenes of bygone splendour in deserted
palace and castle, old-world garden and desolate